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I think that problem with the cico advice is that it's true, but as practical advice for many people it is meaningless. On the ci side, people just think reduce and so they cut healthy nutrient dense food in favor of flavorless made up food, and the co side is highly individual and complicated and dependent in ci.

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2012
Pro-CICO argument: "A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and all calories are used identically by the body for purpose of weight loss or gain."
Anti-CICO argument: "It's really complicated metabolically."

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Yeah, another blogger cherry picking stuff to "disprove" that the rock bottom of hundred of years of scientific knowlegde must be wrong...

He's not really arguing against CICO per say. He's expanding and talking about nuances of energy expenditure and how it doesn't even out on a daily basis, but more in terms of months and years based on evidence he's presenting from the 1950's! So well within the past hundred years of scientific knowledge you are citing

Just further proof that CICO is incalculable and even if it was it wouldn't match up in any meaningful and useful manner.

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CICO is a generalised term for the "conservation of energy" hypothesis that is commonly written as the first law of thermodynamics.

Conservation of energy basically means that as energy changes form, it is fully converted to the new form, no energy is ever lost. Although as energy changes from one form, it can split into 2 or more forms of an equal amount of energy, ie chemical energy splits into heat and kinetic when converted in muscle cells.

Ultimately we (an organism) are a massive ball of energy conversion. Heat, kinetic, potential, electrical & chemical energies are constantly being converted in billions of cells in our bodies at any particular moment and also being lost to the environment. These energy conversions are an incredibly complex process, tho over billions of years of evolution our cells have evolved to a kind of homeostasis where the system just work together.

The major problem happens when our conscious brain reads an Internet piece and decides to start "controlling" the energy conversion processes from its very limited linear thought process.

Do you get this? Our conscious minds have a singular thought train. It can only think of one thing at once. Our bodies have billions of energy conversion processes happening at any 1 time. It is almost impossible to subjugate the sub conscious body systems with your conscious mind. Ie impose cico.

"We" do have some control over the environment and conditions this massive ball of energy conversion (our body) operates in. So in effect we can "encourage" and "influence" CICO, but if you think you can control it, your dreaming.

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For sure, heat and kinetic energy are the end of the line, if your body produces these forms of energy they are not retrievable by us, they are lost to the environment, to get more heat or kinetic energy we have to convert more higher forms of energy like chemical energy unless we physically expose our selfs to a higher heat gradient like sitting in the sun.
But yeah in general we are constantly losing heat energy all the time to the environment

Now, I realize that studies all show that you can get equal outcomes with equal calories, but that is not the point at all....the point is satiety, nutritional value, and what behavioral changes the food will cause down the line. (I.E. 500cal of pure sugar will make you feel much differently than 500cal of steak)

Most nutritional studies are done where foods are FORCED onto people and mathematically tabulated...that is not real life.

in fact, most nutritional "studies" are done through self-reporting because it's too expensive to coop people up and feed them an actual measured diet.

as for your 3 points? that can't be right, because clearly so many women are simply too stoopid to use a food scale correctly and just lie on the internetz about their personal experiences.

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

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"in fact, most nutritional "studies" are done through self-reporting because it's too expensive to coop people up and feed them an actual measured diet."

You are 100% right. I stand corrected.

My point was that most of them rely on either self-reporting or were done by the military (forced) a long time ago. In doing this, it's all reduced to "calories only" because this method lends itself to graphical analysis....how would one make a study on eating carrots or liver pate in place of x or y, over many months, completely throwing math out the window?

It would just end up being called "subjective" in the scientific community, or in other words, irrelevant. We think in calories because those are the only terms that are quantifiable statistically. That does not make it the correct way to conceptualize nutrition; it just makes it the most scientifically convenient.

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"There was absolutely no relationship between CI & CO at any time point during the entire study. Shotgun –> broad side of a barn? The subjects were free to eat as much of whatever they wanted the entire time. CICO expects you to walk on the orange line. Good luck!"

Like I said Neo.... there is no spoon.

I know, crazy huh? There was another one with people eating ad libitum and the calories they ate followed a graph of the calories they expended but by two days later. Crazy stuff. We don't know everything.

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Most of the studies I have read use not healthy but obese individuals. The money is in treating people with health issues, not keeping people healthy.

You're right, the majority of studies are done in obese individuals. However, you're moving past the realm of this thread by talking directly about health instead of the efficacy of the energy balance equation and weight loss.

Comment

2012
Pro-CICO argument: "A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and all calories are used identically by the body for purpose of weight loss or gain."
Anti-CICO argument: "It's really complicated metabolically."